Kevin Bacon’s experiment that highlights what you lose when you fail to differentiate yourself.

A few years ago, actor Kevin Bacon wanted to know what it would be like to not be famous.

He commissioned a Hollywood make-up artist to make a prosthetic disguise that would make him unrecognizable to fans.

Then he wore it to an L.A. shopping center well-known for spotting celebrities.

He says in an interview in the Telegraph, “People didn’t bother me, but they also ignored me. No one was nice to me—they looked right through me, and pushed in front of me…”

Bacon’s description reminds us of why it’s so important for you to become a celebrity in your niche.

With celebrity, you are hard to ignore. People seek you out instead of only finding you through referral or by accident which means customers come to you. And you never have to worry about competitors with less experience and fewer credentials pushing in front of you.

Making yourself the face of your company and becoming a celebrity is quite simply, the fastest, easiest, least expensive and most effective way for you to differentiate yourself from everybody else.

This differentiation will help:

People recognize you in your niche, often making you their only choice.

Give you authority where people will not only respect your advice, but pay you handsomely for it.

Cause consumers to seek you out rather than you seeking them out.

Make you more appealing so that people want to be around you and associate with you.

Here are four tips for making yourself into a celebrity that will help make your business the recognizable “go-to” source in your niche.

1) Become the face of your company. What company do you think of when I say: Steve Jobs? Walt Disney? Bill Gates? Donald Trump? Dan Kennedy? Personality makes you different from every other realtor, restaurant, financial advisor, etc.

People enjoy getting to know, like and trust people. So when you become the face of your company people will associate your business with doing business with you, even if they are speaking to one of your employees.

2) Climb the ladder of expertise. Personal branding expert, Nick Nanton points out that every business person in your category is required to meet certain basic criteria to work in your field.

For example, a lawyer must go to law school and pass the bar exam. When you raise yourself up by going beyond the minimum requirements and do “celebrity-creating-type-things” such as writing a book or serving on a high profile committee, you move yourself up another rung above everybody else who isn’t doing those things.

3) Specialize. Who would you prefer help you with a problem you’re having? Someone who specializes in the problem or someone who has general knowledge, but doesn’t necessarily deal with your particular problem all the time?

For example, if you have gum disease and need gum surgery, do you want your general practitioner dentist or a periodontist who specializes in gum surgery?

Not only will you stand out as the clear choice, but specialists get paid more than generalists.

4) Display your expertise. You can be the best at what you do. (Tweet this!) You can be the most qualified with the most credentials. But if you don’t let people know, then you’ll look just like everyone else in your field.

You must let people know about your expertise. Display awards and credentials. Alert the media with newsworthy items often. Offer to present and speak at events or to organizations where your target audience is present in order to showcase your expertise and make yourself well-known in your niche.

People have to know who you are if you want them to seek you out. Making yourself a celebrity will help you accomplish this—and it’s much faster, easier and less expensive than other avenues you could take. Plus because no one can be you, you can forever protect your company and avoid it falling into the sameness trap that is met with apathy.

Darcy Juarez has created marketing systems in the direct response and information marketing world that have gained national attention. As the Director of Marketing for GKIC , Darcy has taught thousands of business owners her step-by-step strategies for creating their own success and obtaining more time and more profits. For more money-making marketing tips, tactics and strategies, go to www.GKIC.com

4 Responses

Hello Darcy,
I love getting your inspiring emails.
I wonder if you could help me further:
I have trouble getting my customers to recognise the work we do at http://www.whiteweddingpages.co.uk.
For example: I recently ran a mini marketing campaign for a bridal wear specialist. We created a super little marketing strategy. Over 7 days we drove 9 brides to send an actual email – also giving their mobile number, to the shop owner; more than 30 to visit their website and 5 to seek out their phone number (we don’t know who they are, just use our systems to force a ‘looker’ to take some required action to find the phone number) which our systems count. The top and bottom is, the customer hasn’t yet made a sale that they could attribute, and is now complaining that it hasn’t been successful. I think it was….
A ‘hair-pulling-out-time’ for me!
Your article today gave me lots of encouragement to think differently – we made the shop owner ‘famous’ albeit for a short time, which meant she was head and shoulders above her competition during the promotion.
I’ll take on board your thoughts if you can help, in what I can do, or how I should overcome this ‘negative customer’ mindset – even if it’s how just to think more positively about it.

Gail, in the end you need to set expectations for your customers/clients and before the campaign runs (it’s very hard to do after) ask them some questions like…”How many people will need to call you off of this campaign for you to feel it’s successful?” Ultimately maybe she has a conversion problem and that may not be something you can help with. You drove buyers to them, but if they can’t close the buyers, they might never be happy. You may even ask them something like…”I understand you’re not happy with the results and I just want to make sure I go to (list one of their competitors) and offer the same service you think you’ve done everything on your end to close each sale.” Anyway hope that helps!

Very neat Darcy. Branding you is the way to go, because if you check out inspiring brands, and really want to see who moves you, a face is almost always behind these brands, and the more recognizable, the better. If people can see you as being different you’re likely to see immense success online or offline.

I branded myself as the internet traveling guy who makes money online and received an interview request from brand dot com quickly after. Being true to you, and being open, makes the difference.

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